Lidia Yuknavitch - Dora - A Headcase

“It’s just highly irregular,” he says again. He picks up the phone. “I’m gonna have to call it in downtown.”

You know that sound in the movie soundtrack where the record needle skips and drives a wedge through the album? It’s the oh fuck soundscape.

Ave Maria, no doubt improvising, begins to cry. It’s a unique weeping, of course. Little hiccup sounding whimper lurches. He stares at her, phone in the air between his gut and his ear. Then she amps up the crying and starts this rather impressive erratic breathing thing. Her face gets blotchy. She scratches at the sides of her own arms. I swear she could do performance art.

“Oh shit,” Little Teena says, “you don’t wanna upset this one,” he says, following her lead, stroking one of his lamb chops.

I grit my teeth menacingly.

“Wait a minute here, wait a minute,” the gut says standing up, one hand on his … what the fuck is that? Yeah. Should have guessed. Taser.

I spit.

Little Teena starts to walk around the intake desk where blubberino is. “You better listen to me or we’re gonna have a situation here,” Little Teena says. He moves behind the desk.

“Hey!” white Fat Albert exclaims, “You can’t come back here!”

Ave Maria shoots for a major distraction and turns the volume up to full wail. “If there’s no room here, what are you going to do to my siiiiiiiiiissssssssssster? You can’t put her in jail! Please don’t put her in jail! She can’t go to JJJJJJJJJAAAAAAA-IIIIIILLLLLLLL” wailing and bawling full force — until she’s pretty much textbook … what’s the word I’m searching for? Oh yeah. Hysterical.

“ What the,” chub says, “hey, can you get her to quiet down? We’ve got a houseful of sensitives here — hey! Can you get her to stop that?”

Ave Maria is rocking and crying and pulling her Alice hair making a total scene.

Little Teena’s nearly next to lard-ass behind the intake desk. I start jumping up and down like a bunny.

“Which one of’em did you say was the live one?” fatty goes, his eyes big blue buttons.

“The head case,” Little Teena says pointing at me. I bite my lip until it bleeds and smile.

“That other’s her sister,” Little Teena yells above the ruckus Ave Maria is making, “like I said. Legal guardian, if you can believe it. Sister nearly got her eye put out — but still wouldn’t let us take her without coming along. Families, huh? Buncha crackpots if you ask me.”

“ Well all right, all right,” donut face says, and punches something into his Dell. Then he gets on some kind of walkie talkie device. Like a Toys “R” Us-looking walkie talkie. Budget cuts? Christ this place has the technology of Sesame Street .

Pudgeball speaks some mysterious lingo into his Toys “R” Us walkie talkie. Something equally incomprehensible comes back out at him. “I know what time it is. We got an emergency kinda thing down here. We got an immediate intake. We can sort it out in the morning. Get your ass out of bed.” Gibberish white noise comes back.

It begins to look like things are back on track.

“All righty then we’re gonna set her up temporarily in a room here,” pudding says, licking his fingers, “but we’ll need a transfer in the morning. This is a one night deal. I don’t care who signed your paperwork, we’re full up. Got a wetback last night that tried to bite me. Man they just don’t pay me enough for this shit.”

My.

Breathing.

Jackknifes.

Wetback . This dumb racist motherfucker thinks Obsidian is Mexican. My heart fists my chest. I clench my hands into little bomblets. Little Teena feels me ramping up and shoots me an easy now look. “Yeah, well I’m sure you get all kinds,” Little Teena says. “Say, did you intake that barefoot bandit dude? I heard he ended up in these parts?”

“Naw, we aint that lucky. We just get the real rejects. Had to restrain that wetback. Tight. She’s a looker though,” he says, rubbing his third chin and laughing, “Wouldn’t mind a tap or two, if you know what I mean … but hell. I need this job.”

There is a bomb in my skull. An IED. This guy? This guy has got to go.

Little Teena is shooting me just calm down looks.

You know how sometimes your actual brain gets taken over by your … ID? Pretty sure that’s the correct terminology. The image of this fatass fuck restraining Obsidian and leaning over her with his three chins and chub sweat and donut drool snaps my brain into little black shards of ID. And you know what they say about the ID. It’s a cauldron of seething excitations striving solely to bring about the satisfaction of instinctual needs.

Guess who I learned that from.

So when fat boy turns to me and says, “You got a name, ugly?”

Fuck the plan.

I step up to his intake desk. Particle board painted white. I’ll tell you who I am, I say in my head. I’m an ID-ridden ball of chaos, motherfucker. I’m your worst nightmare. My eyes feel a little like they are going to shoot out of my head and shatter his face into a zillion pieces. I open my mouth. And then

My.

Throat.

Flaps.

BANG.

Voice.

“YEAH,” I go, much to the surprise of Little Teena and Ave Maria, and maybe even me. “I have a name, assfuck. My name is Dora,” I say, and then I lurch across his pathetic little desk and bite his cheek exactly like a chimp mauling its so-called human parent would.

“GET HER OFF ME GET HER OFF!” THE HUMAN PUFFERFISH screams.

I taste metal. Chub’s blood.

Then I see rainbow lightning? No, it’s Crazy String — you know, that kid crap you shoot out of a can — being shot all over the place, no doubt by a one-eyed blonde girl who is piping high notes all over the room. Before I can say, “Where the fuck did you get Crazy String?” Ave Maria gets a hold of a hand-held bullhorn from tubby the tubs desk — you know, the kind that make the ear — piercing BLAP noise.

BLAP!

And

BLAP!

I swear those things could give you a heart attack.

Lardo struggles away from my monkey attack. I froth and growl.

“Just what the fuck is going on here?” he screams, cupping his newly gnawed on cheek, striking a defensive fat boy pose.

Little Teena deftly dips in and snags the Taser right off of chub butt’s hip holster. Momentarily deafened from the BLAP, also bleeding from the meat of his cheek, also blinded by Crazy String wrapped all over his face and head, intake guy gets three Taser shots from Little Teena straight to the gut. Fatty slaps at the air and then falls out of his chair onto the floor, making a little “maaaaaawwwrrrrllll” sound.

“He’s Tased, bro!” Ave Maria pipes, jumping up and down.

Undeterred and seemingly in control, Little Teena rummages around in the desk drawers. Duct tape is in there like it was waiting for us. He chucks it at me. “Mouth, wrists, ankles,” he shouts, wielding the Taser like a Glock. Man, mutton chops just look right on him. It’s a little disturbing.

I’m pretty much deaf from the BLAP horn too, but I know what to do. Mouth, wrists, ankles. Oh jeez. Blubbo has cankles. While I’m taping Godzilla up, Little Teena climbs a chair and fiddles with the security camera.

“What are you doing?” I go. But then I get it. Duh. He’s taking out the SD card. Now we’ll have a film of ourselves. Brilliant.

But this whole scene has ramped up from zero to sixty pretty fucking fast. I am sweating under my tits and on my upper lip. Fuck. Think straight. Then someone’s tugging on my arm from below. Ave Maria? Little Teena? Security?

I turn. I look down amidst the chaos. But who is there just isn’t possible. Unless you think about all the ways in which we ditch people we don’t want to deal with. I’ll be goddamned. I mean I’ll be double, triple goddamned.